If McInerney fans search hard enough, they’ll find a faint heartwarming message somewhere in the midst of this ho-hum plot.
Life can be both good and bad, and you’re guaranteed heaps of both in McInerney’s follow-up to The Alphabet Sisters (2004).
Just ask great-grandmother Lola, the crusty doyen of the Quinlan family. The octogenarian has encouraged the entire family to take separate vacations during the Christmas holiday while she stays at the family-owned Australian Valley View Motel and holds down the fort. Of course, her family believes that Lola’s just looking forward to some much-needed rest since the motel doesn’t have any bookings while they’re gone. But wily old Lola, who’s become somewhat of an expert using the Internet, has other plans. She’s actually booked free rooms for a handful of people who have some very messy personal problems. Not that Lola’s aware that these people have problems, and not that their problems are really very central to the overall plot, since each problem is resolved before any of the potential guests show up at the motel. So, if Lola doesn’t have to deal with all the guests and their problems—after they happily resolve their issues, they cancel their reservations—what does she have to worry about? For one, Lola’s son wants to sell the motel and pursue different interests, and that kind of throws Lola’s future into disarray. Plus, Lola’s 12-year-old great-granddaughter is acting like a brat because her father is dating again five years after the death of her mother, and Lola’s surviving adult granddaughters, Bett and Carrie, are also acting pretty bratty and arguing like, well, like sisters. Then there’s the pushy volunteer at the local charity store where Lola spends a great deal of her time. She insists that they decorate the display window for the annual Christmas competition using her design. Lola, of course, applies the wisdom of her advanced years to straightening out every situation, while briefly reconnecting to her past and resolving her own future.
If McInerney fans search hard enough, they’ll find a faint heartwarming message somewhere in the midst of this ho-hum plot.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-53403-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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